Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Does anyone like the Origin system?

Just takes a huge amount of dev time away from the actual game and adds content very few want.

But they are already.. poorly written.. and very generic, not one Gnome, Halfling or Dwarf.. and Larion had the gaul to tell us off for making Vault Dwellers and they do the exact same thing with origin characters...

Wrong. unless you have some very compelling proof, you can't claim very few want origin characters. I don't have much to say many do, but I did make some anti origin posts on Reddit and got downvoted quite harshly.

The people who want the origin characters are not the die-hard crazies who post on the forums. They're all the regular people out there who never give feedback and just play the game and want things to be simple.

this.
It's important because we can bitch about origin characters all day long (and I'm right there with the bitching side, my first major post in this forum was me bitching about origin characters) but we are a minority in this as far as I can tell.

Reddit is awful though so that just convinces me origins are bad

Maybe we are, maybe we are not, and if we are, how small of a minority : 5% ? 25%? 45% ? I don't know, and I feel it doesn't matter much. I think catering to the people who won't play an Origins companions, but instead a fully custom PC, costs a fraction of what it takes to create merely one Origins companion. (Creating an Origins PC/semi-custom PC would probably take less, as I assume a lot of voice acting won't be needed.) To a very good extent, the fully custom PC is already there. If Larian can give us a couple of options at character creation, all the better, the most important is to not remove options.

No point in giving feedback ever, then, since the ones doing it are always gonna be the vocal minority. Never understood that argument, to be honest.



Was gonna ask if you don't like Astarion fanart, but apparently it evolved to Astarion figurines

I said nothing about not giving feedback. please by all means give feedback. As I said, I started my "Larian forums career" by raising the same feedback. I simply pointed out the fact we are a minority. everything else is your interpretation.

Yeah, but if the argument is that there's a 'silent majority' that doesn't give feedback because they're fine with things, then there's really no point in reporting anything other than bugs and we're all just beta testers.

Like, since we got actual data on it, 96% of people went along with the pretty awkward romance scenes, right? Should we assume a good 90% are fine with them because they're not flooding forums?

Anyway, don't wanna derail the topic. It's just an argument that i never understood since it relies in the absence of data.

Is it on reddit? Then it's wrong

I can't help wondering though. If they hadn't added origin characters I suspect the people that now demand to have them wouldn't have even noticed the lack of them. And maybe the game would have been better overal.

I don't mind origins per se (I do recognize some problems), but I think people who are fine with them (the majority Abits mentions) would be just as fine with not having them. Or at least not care very much about that.

Came across this (poll) post on Reddit today. As of the time of me posting this 403 have voted for custom character while Origin characters remain under 100.

I have to wonder if Origin characters are more popular with the casual audience, those who don't obsess over a game enough to post/vote in forums. I imagine they're probably the majority of Larian's customer base. And of course it's not like you can't play a custom character on one run and an Origin character on another - I've seen lots of people around here planning to do just that.

Between the speculations on continuity with the older games questions on how an established character would be integrated into an origin system (Minsc) and the constant back and forth between the question of player agency and narrative cohesion (Herosexual NPCs RIP Dragon age Origins - Next gen RPG and Will there be a Prologue, before your capture?/Character Acting, Demeanor and Personallity I feel like I keep seeing relitigated, the same central question: where on the scale between 'total sandbox' character freedom and a totally linear narrative do we want this RPG to peg to?

"Total sandbox" is impossible, and "totally linear" is not on the table, but Larian in an effort to marry these two, gives you the option of play pre-made characters with bespoke storylines and with established histories and personalities, or creating your own custom main character who can be a blank slate for the player to write on.

I think this is a laudable endeavor for Larian to attempt but I'm afraid that in trying to be a jack-of-all-trades it won't be able to give us enough of either type of play-style to really make a good story. I feel this way because that's how I felt about DOS:II, I didn't think playing a custom character was worth it storywise, and I didn't think that any individual origin storyline satisfied me from an RPG, 'choose your adventure' stand point.

I find total sandbox games, like a lot of the Rogue-like games that have been coming out, terribly dull, I come to this genre for the interactive storytelling, "emergent gameplay" doesn't really interest me as much, so I'm inclined to want a narrative with a more established character but ideally I would like a game that let's me create a custom character that would be able to interact with the world with the same kind of depth as an origin character.

Funny to read that, as some of your points are very similar to a part of a long post I'm (very slowly) writing.

Larian is aiming at something I consider a step forward for RPGs (and games in general) - both custom and fixed protagonists to choose from - but it's hard to get right and not getting it right is going to result in both options being underwhelming at best. It could be truly amazing if both were done very well, but that is both difficult and requires lots of resources.

Honestly I'm still confused how Larian adding origin characters in any way detracts from playing a custom character? Other than the theoretical 'resources could be better spent elsewhere' I just don't get it. Having fleshed out companions (that could also double as a protagonist) in no way overshadows your custom character . . . that argument applies to any companion in any game regardless if they can be origin characters or not. Is it some feeling of loss that you are missing out on content by not playing the origin characters or something?
And I'm saying this a someone who has zero interest in playing the origin characters. I'll be playing custom characters and the NPCs will be my companions, done.

Some number of people apparently like origin characters . . . and Larian feels it is worthwhile . . . so good for them!

And a good chunk of the work has to be done to make them companions anyway

The problem is not that the companions are fleshed out. The problem is that Origin Characters have backstories and tadpoles whereas Tav only has the tadpole. Thus, the only thing that makes Tav unique and actually feel connected/important to the world ([Baldurian] dialogue tags are not sufficient) is not, in fact, unique.

And the 'theoretical resources could be spent elsewhere' argument is valid. Instead of making Astarion, SH, etc Origin characters, Larian could have added DAO-like background stories for Tav or something similar. Idk how much more work it was to convert Astarion+ from normal companions to Origin companions, but it was probably not zero.

My favorite part of a blank slate custom character is that their background is whatever I imagine it to be. I don’t need anything else. I don’t feel like my characters are less integrated into the story. My character is important because they are the one who has assumed the leadership role and is making all of the important decisions.

Having DAO origin stories would limit our choices in character creation. BG3 has so many more race and class options than DAO that origins for all of those would be unfeasible. DAO originally had twice as many origin stories planned out but BioWare had to cut them for all of the resources they took to create. There is a reason they dropped the idea from DA2 and DAI.

It’s also worth noting that we don’t yet know how integrated custom characters will be into the city of Baldur’s Gate. It could be that custom characters will have their own homes and some NPCs that reflect their class.